You have a lens INSIDE your eye that is just like a peanut M&M!
Let’s talk about my favorite candy and my favorite eye condition and what they have in common.
We are all born with a lens inside our eye, and for the most part this lens is crystal clear when we are born and into our teens and 20s. This lens is what is responsible for helping us focus - so your lens is why you can read without needing reading glasses. If you wear glasses, your lens is why you don’t need bifocals to focus at near.
http://webeye.ophth.uiowa.edu/eyeforum/cases/146-morgagnian-cataract.htm
This lens gets hard and cloudy over time and we call a cloudy lens a cataract. Once you have poor vision or symptomatic glare, we can perform cataract surgery, which is one of the most commonly performed surgeries in the world.
Not only is a lens about the size of an M&M but they both have three layers. A lens has a thin bag on the outside, a small and harder nucleus in the middle, and softer cortex in the middle. So I like to think of the capsular bag as the candy coat of the lens, with the soft cortex as the chocolate and hard nucleus as the peanut.
When the peanut and/or chocolate get cloudy, we can perform a surgery where we remove the peanut and chocolate but leave the candy coat mostly intact. In order to do this, we make a small circular opening on the candy coat, called a capsulorrhexis, use a special ultrasound machine called a phacoemulsification or phaco machine to break up and remove the chocolate and peanut, then put in a brand new plastic lens inside the candy coat.
In cataract surgery, we make a small hole in the candy shell and use a machine to break up and vacuum up the chocolate and peanut, leaving the candy shell intact in order to place a lens inside.
There you go! Cataracts are just like Peanut M&Ms.